


Auntie

by Absolutely_Corrupted



Series: Reflections/SIs in KHR [2]
Category: KHR - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Tri-ni-set, Gen, Guardian Bonds, Italian Mafia, Sexism, Sky Attraction, Violence, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-10-25 06:34:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17719988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Absolutely_Corrupted/pseuds/Absolutely_Corrupted
Summary: OC-insert as Iemitsu's sister.





	Auntie

Reincarnation, at least in my case, was a strange experience.

 

Unlike fanfiction would have you believe, there is no convenient higher power to explain things to you. You are given no explanation, no greater purpose. Instead, you simply live on - the same as before, just in different circumstances.

 

On the bright side, you aren’t really _you_ any longer. Trust me, it may not sound like it, but it’s a blessing. The memories never fade – how can they when you have no explanation as to why they remain in the first place? – but there is a degree of separation. A word or smell may trigger a recollection, but they feel more like visions than true memories. 

 

Actually, the best way to describe it would be to compare it to a movie. You watch it play out, certain parts make you laugh, make you cry, but in the end, you know you’re only a spectator; the events will happen the way they were always going to – nothing you do or feel will change that.

 

Quite honestly, had things gone differently, I might have eventually forgotten the finer details of my first life.

 

In my second life, I was named Masako, for the 17th century Japanese Empress Consort. That seems a bit random, but less so when you consider my father’s name, Ietsuna. On his side of the family, they’ve been naming sons after Tokugawa Shoguns for generations. As the first daughter born since then, my name was chosen based off of my brother’s. Thus, I became the Masako to his Iemitsu.

 

(I suppose I should be grateful I wasn’t named for Tokugawa Iemitsu’s elder sister. Sen-hime led a rather tragic life after all.)

 

Anyway, despite it being my second go-round, life was pretty normal. _I_ was normal. Once again, fanfiction was wrong. Being reincarnated didn’t make me some sort of genius or an adult trapped in a child’s body. All those memories meant next to nothing to me until I had a mind developed enough to understand them.

 

My new family was fairly typical. Oh, we had the occasional bout of drama, but no more so than any of the other families in our neighborhood. Really, the only unusual thing I can think of would be our ethnicity. You see, my great-great-grandfather was Italian. He and his wife moved to Japan to settle down and have a family, adopting Japanese names when they did so. Their son, my great-grandfather, married a Japanese woman. Then my grandfather, Yoshinobu, went back to his roots and married an Italian woman. And finally, my father married my mother, whom he met whilst living in Ireland. Needless to say, it was pretty hard to get a read on where we were from.

 

But hey, we were diverse! And I’d once read that racial diversity led to healthier offspring, ‘hybrid vigor’ and all that.

 

But I digress. What I’m really trying to say is that even though I grew up with the knowledge that I’d lived another life, I was still Sawada Masako, first and foremost. And I thought, up until I was 19, that I was a normal girl, one with a few... _quirks_ , but still generally normal.

 

That belief was shattered the day my brother came to me, begging for help.

 

…

 

“Iemitsu?” I asked, baffled. “What are you doing here?” I opened the door wider to let my brother in, shutting it once he’d entered my cramped little apartment. I winced when I realized how that sounded. “Sorry, that was rude.”

 

He gave me a tired smile. “It’s okay; I probably should have called first…” He rubbed the back of his head a tad sheepishly.

 

I gestured to the towel wrapped around my hair, evidence of the shower I’d just taken. “Yeah, a little warning would have been nice.” It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy to see him, I just hadn’t been expecting a visit. There was a substantial age gap between my brother and I, so we weren’t particularly close. In fact, the last time we’d spoken face to face had been Christmas – it was currently March.

 

“Masa-chan,” Iemitsu said, once I’d lost the towel and we’d sat down at my kitchen table. “I need your help.”

 

“My help?” I repeated dubiously. “What kind of help?” I wasn’t saying ‘no,’ I just didn’t know what a teenaged university student could do for her thirty-two year old brother that he couldn’t do for himself. Suddenly, I froze in horror. “You don’t need an alibi do you? I mean, I’ll give you one, but I really don’t want to be arrested, I need to graduate!”

 

A startled laugh escaped him. “No,” he assured me. “I don’t need an alibi.” He became serious once more. “I need your help keeping my son safe.”

 

“Pardon?” I asked weakly. My brother and I shared an amicable relationship, but also a shallow one – we simply didn’t know each other that well. So I _really_ didn’t understand why he was coming to me with something as important as his son’s life.

 

“Masako,” he began. “Before I explain, I’m going to show you something strange. You have to promise not to freak out.”

 

“...Okay,” I said slowly. No matter how much trepidation I felt, he was still my brother. It was my familial duty to hear him out.

 

Iemitsu lifted his right hand very deliberately before narrowing his eyes in concentration. I realized what was going to happen a split second before it actually did. “Oh,” I slumped in relief. I could totally deal with this. “I had always wondered if you could do it too…”

 

“What.” It came out more like a statement than a question.

 

“The flame thing,” I elaborated. He still looked blank. “Um, here. I’ll show you.” I raised my hand to mirror his. “See!” My left hand was now merrily burning alongside my brother’s. I formed a fist and smothered the flame. “So what about our powers is endangering your son?” Maybe Tsuna was having trouble controlling it?

 

The silence stretched and I began to doubt my assumption. I watched warily as a muscle pulsed in my brother’s jaw and started to wring my hands in response to the palpable anger he was radiating. Finally, Iemitsu released a gusty breath through his nose before reaching across the table to grip my shoulders. “Masako, I need you to be completely honest with me – _Where did you learn to do that?_ ”

 

“Um,” I swallowed convulsively. “It happened my last year of high school, when I was sixteen.” Hey, just because I said reincarnation didn’t make me some sort of genius, doesn’t mean that it didn’t give me an edge. “After that, I practiced in secret until I could control it…” I trailed off.

 

Iemitsu was no longer angry, but he was looking at the ceiling, expression pained in a way that I’d never seen before. He shut his eyes for a long moment before refocusing on me. “I suppose this makes things a bit easier, in the long run,” he admitted.

 

I said nothing. I’d yet to get a straight answer out of my brother and the curiosity was eating away at me.

 

“Listen,” he said finally. “This thing, with the flames, that you and I can do? It runs in families. We make up a small fraction of the world’s population.” I stayed absolutely still, waiting for the point to all this. “We have an entire hidden society, one that holds more power than any one government in existence, despite our infinitesimal numbers.”

 

I frowned, unable to believe my brother. I knew this wasn’t my original world, but surely things couldn’t be so drastically different? Us being pyrokinetic was one thing – there were people who claimed to have ESP and supernatural powers in my old world, but an entire society of people with pyrokinetic abilities was far-fetched. It just wasn’t possible to keep something like that hidden from the general populace.

 

“It’s because of what we are and what we can do,” Iemitsu hastened to explain when he caught sight of my skeptical look. “The people in charge know about us, but we have technology beyond what anyone else is capable of and powers aside from the simple flame you showed me.”

 

Ah, he’d misinterpreted the look. I didn’t doubt that a group of people with supernatural powers held power over the normal people of the world. Come on, I’d seen movies before. But… “How can an entire society remain hidden in this day and age? Surely having to live in secrecy would mean they have less power and fewer numbers than you’re implying.”

 

Iemitsu sighed. “I suppose I wasn’t very clear. The _truth_ of our society is hidden, not the people or the society itself. In fact, many civilians have heard of us, though they’ve been somewhat misled when it comes to who we are or what we do.” I gestured impatiently for him to finish. “They think we’re criminal groups – the mafia, the mob, the _yakuza_.”

 

“Those _are_ criminal groups!” I exclaimed.

 

“Only on the surface,” my brother soothed ineffectually.

 

“What about the murders?” I demanded. “You can’t expect me to believe those are simply misunderstood in the eyes of the general public – it’s _murder._ ”

 

“Masako, _sit down._ ” I belatedly noticed I’d stood up and reluctantly sat back down. “Please,” Iemitsu said. “You have to understand, we have an entirely different culture. Certain things aren’t so easily forgiven. Honor and loyalty mean more to us than they do to the rest of the world.”

 

“And you’re saying that excuses torture and brutal murder?”

 

“I’m just saying there are reasons for what we do – we’re not monsters just because our world works differently!” Iemitsu had ceased trying to keep his voice level, too caught up in our argument.

 

“No, but you are barbarians.”

 

My brother gritted his teeth and inhaled very deliberately. “Look, we can argue this – something I have no involvement in or control over by the way – another time. Tsuna’s life is more important at the moment. Alright?”

 

Chastened, I nodded.

 

Iemitsu started speaking again, quicker than before in what I assumed was an attempt to get to whatever it was he wanted to ask me. “One of our direct ancestors is something of a legendary figure amongst flame-users. He’s the entire reason we’ve got our own society, as opposed to being scattered and isolated. The specific…” My brother paused – seemingly searching for the appropriate word. “… _group_ that is his legacy has remained the most powerful association of flame-users in the world, without exception, since its creation.

 

“The thing is, in order to lead this group, this _famiglia_ , one has to have some measure of our ancestor’s power. To have that, the person in question must be a member of his bloodline, like us.”

 

I frowned, starting to see where this was going. God, how was I supposed to help my brother if he and his family had been caught up in the power plays of some super-powered mafia group…?

 

Iemitsu went on. “Another branch of our family – one more distantly related – has been leading it since he retired to Japan. But,” and here my brother ran a hand down his face. “Their heirs are either dead or unavailable and we remain the only other descendants with the right skills.”

 

“What? So they’re going to make you take over?” I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous!”

 

He coughed. “Uh – no, actually. I can’t.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Iemitsu averted his eyes. “I’m the leader of the sister organization – the one created to keep the famiglia in check, to prevent both corruption and the abuse of its power.”

 

There was a lot to unpack there, but I pushed it aside for the moment to focus on the problem at hand. “What, you can’t do both?”

 

“Exactly,” he said. “My current position precludes me.” He scrubbed at his eyes tiredly. “As such, the current head has broached the subject of naming Tsuna his heir.” The displeasure he felt about this possibility was obvious, if the clenched jaw and the throbbing vein in his temple were any indication. “It’s a dangerous position. And not one that allows for a childhood.”

 

“That’s _terrible_.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

"So what can I do to help?"

 

My brother grimaced. "You can put your own name forward. I'll back you."

 

_"Excuse me?!"_

 

 


End file.
